Don't hold your breath. I have been renting for nearly ten years now a- and am beginning to feel like a complete idiot. Meanwhile, I am surrounded by friends who have somewhere proper and settled to live. I suppose it depends how you see a house- and how you see the market.

I certainly can't see the British love affair with buying property ending any time soon. And with a growing population of single households, it seems there will always be a desire for more housing. If you wait and wait- you are just making some landlord rich.

With all due respect decca, in 1995 houses were undervalued in 1995, below there long term trendline, indicating value, difficult to see at the time, ammongst all the doom and gloom, when people wouldn't touch property with a bargepole.

Take that comparison to the last year, the time to leave the market is now (or last year) in the midst of the euphoria that took over.

The BTL bandwagon is a sure sign that things were peaking, amateur investers jumping in like lemmings, after all the real gains had been made.

Its difficult to take a contrarin view of any market, but economic market are cyclic ..... and they boom and bust, its just the way it is.

I'm not saying i'm right either, that would be folly, however I think its highly likely that prices will fall, with a realisation later this year, followed by lots of news reports saying that things will be picking up next spring ... etc etc etc ...... but the falls will continue.

Btw prices are about 35% - 40% over there long term trend.

But people on this site have been forecasting a crash for over a year now. And nothing has happened.....

quote:

Originally posted by Maju:
With all due respect decca, in 1995 houses were undervalued in 1995, below there long term trendline, indicating value, difficult to see at the time, ammongst all the doom and gloom, when people wouldn't touch property with a bargepole.

Take that comparison to the last year, the time to leave the market is now (or last year) in the midst of the euphoria that took over.

The BTL bandwagon is a sure sign that things were peaking, amateur investers jumping in like lemmings, after all the real gains had been made.

Its difficult to take a contrarin view of any market, but economic market are cyclic ..... and they boom and bust, its just the way it is.

I'm not saying i'm right either, that would be folly, however I think its highly likely that prices will fall, with a realisation later this year, followed by lots of news reports saying that things will be picking up next spring ... etc etc etc ...... but the falls will continue.

Btw prices are about 35% - 40% over there long term trend.

I am inclined to agree, but no need for the smug dig at the plight of Estate Agents. Vast numbers of professions have been milking the likes of you to a far higher degree and have probably benefitted from your blessings.
step off the band wagon and take a balanced approach! you talk of Lemmings I throw that back at you!

I dont mean to dig at Estate Agents (well maybe I did), guess I was just having a rant / going off on one, no real offense meant

May I enquire as to why i'm a lemming??

And I do have a very balanced approach, i'm not the ultimate doomongerer that I may appear, and if I see figures to the contrary (land registry) figures showing 2 quarters of consectutive rises, I'll have to seriously think about my position, but as it is at the moment I think renting is the best option, certainly wont be worse off, and maybe a lot better off in a couple of years time.

decca things are now happening, Hometrack have reported I think its 8 months of consectutive falls, with the year on year index now in negative territory, I reckon by the middle of this year Halifax and Nationwides will be the same, however much they manipulate the figures, and Quarter 4 figs from the Land Registery were -2.7 .... which of course is over 10% a year .... crash speed.
Transaction numbers, mortgage approvals etc are also VERY low, no way are prices sustainable at the current levels on these volumes.
Some houses of course will sell, they always do, these are the best houses at the best prices, hence the homes of 'greedy' people stay up for sale for ages.
remember reading an article once by a property expert (not Kirsty or phil) saying that because property is so illiquid (unlike shares that will crash in a day or two) the first signs of a crash are that you put your house up for sale .... and very few or nobady shows up to even look!

Sound familiar?

Sorry for ranting before,I think its just that I've been shot down in flames and laughed at, so many times over the last year for even suggesting a crash, I guess I feel justified at last!

Because CRASH is too strong a word for a levelling off. Which is what is happening.
Lemming comes from following popular urban myth that all estate agents are crooks with their own interest at heart.
It was discussed in our office this morning that it is in the interests of both Solicitors and Surveyors to prolong the agony of house purchase as the more sales a solicitor deals with on behalf of his client the more he gets paid like wise the more bad surveys doled out by a surveyor will ultimately have the buyer paying him more money on surveys on alternantive properties.
Unlike the agent who gets paid more quickly if the transaction runs quickly
So take your digs elsewhere!

immy, I couldn't agree with you more! Our house sale has been prolonged to the point of agony due to the generaL CRAPNESS of our solicitors- and the 'other side's surveyors who have carried out so many surveys that have found absolutely nothing. ( My favourite line from the report? 'There was some evidence of previous insect infestation although he could not find any now' Since the house is 200 years old, it is indeed likely that at some point a stray worm has wandered across the beams....)
Our estate agent, by contrast, has been the model of professionalism

"Nationwide records biggest house price fall in decade"

http://money.guardian.co.uk/news_/story/0,1456,1449184,00.html

This by the way is the first EVER even during the last crash that the Nationwide had reported falls in March.

immy I was not calling you lemming, I was refering to amater BTL landlords and people that have Let to Buy, under the impression it was the road to riches, many are going to get their fingers burnt imo.

And I agree most solicitors and surveyers are terrible at their work.

May I ask why you think the market will just level off?

quote:

Originally posted by Maju:
"Nationwide records biggest house price fall in decade"

http://money.guardian.co.uk/news_/story/0,1456,1449184,00.html


This by the way is the first EVER even during the last crash that the Nationwide had reported falls in March.

immy I was not calling you lemming, I was refering to amater BTL landlords and people that have Let to Buy, under the impression it was the road to riches, many are going to get their fingers burnt imo.

And I agree most solicitors and surveyers are terrible at their work.

May I ask why you think the market will just level off?

I assume (please correct me if I'm wrong) that you are one of the posters from the house price crash site that are all predicting huge falls in property prices.

All informed opinion agrees that house prices may be around 20% too high at the moment but none of them believe there will be a crash as the economic climate is simply not right for it currently.

You may want prices to drop significantly so you can enter the market but it most likely is not going to happen. The most I have heard (from people who know what they are talking about) is around 4-5% reduction over two years.

Rental yield is a good indication of value, on this premise property is about 50% over valued.

I presume the 'people that know what they are on about' are people that make money from mortgage lending etc.

People were talking people like that during the dot com boom ......... you know, fundamentals dont matter ....... and then ...... POP

Like I say, i'm not saying i'm right either, just that I see no feesable evidence to the contrary.

quote:

You may want prices to drop significantly so you can enter the market but it most likely is not going to happen. The most I have heard (from people who know what they are talking about) is around 4-5% reduction over two years.

I afraid this not an argument for prices to level off, more of a wish imo

quote:

Originally posted by immy21:
Because CRASH is too strong a word for a levelling off. Which is what is happening.
Lemming comes from following popular urban myth that all estate agents are crooks with their own interest at heart.
It was discussed in our office this morning that it is in the interests of both Solicitors and Surveyors to prolong the agony of house purchase as the more sales a solicitor deals with on behalf of his client the more he gets paid like wise the more bad surveys doled out by a surveyor will ultimately have the buyer paying him more money on surveys on alternantive properties.
Unlike the agent who gets paid more quickly if the transaction runs quickly
So take your digs elsewhere!

Well said *gives a round of applause*

So no comment on the fact that I didn't call immy a lemming in the first place then.

Anyway hope you enjoy the levelling off period.

Do you indeed have any reasons why prices wont fall by more than 5% ????

Other than you don't want them too?

quote:

Originally posted by Maju:
Rental yield is a good indication of value, on this premise property is about 50% over valued.

I presume the 'people that know what they are on about' are people that make money from mortgage lending etc.

People were talking people like that during the dot com boom ......... you know, fundamentals dont matter ....... and then ...... POP

Like I say, i'm not saying i'm right either, just that I see no feesable evidence to the contrary.

quote:

You may want prices to drop significantly so you can enter the market but it most likely is not going to happen. The most I have heard (from people who know what they are talking about) is around 4-5% reduction over two years.

I afraid this not an argument for prices to level off, more of a wish imo

Quite wrong, people I refer to are advisors to the MPC as well as one individul who sits on the MPC. As I said - people who know what they are talking about.

But what is their reasoning Gimpl?

quote:

Originally posted by Gimpl: Quite wrong, people I refer to are advisors to the MPC as well as one individul who sits on the MPC. As I said - people who know what they are talking about.

Members of the MPC have to be guarded in what they say as they do not want to be blamed for any fall in house prices or start a panic. Mervyn King got into enough trouble with his mild comments made last June.

So they are never, whatever they think, going to say publicly that there will be a crash, they do however make some guarded predictions:

"Britain's homeowners were warned by a senior member of the Bank of England's interest-rate committee yesterday to brace themselves for the "significant probability" that house prices will fall by up to 30%.

In the Bank's second blunt assessment of the market in the past three months, Steve Nickell said the boom in prices had left them far above their long-term average level and vulnerable to a sharp downward move.

Mr Nickell, one of the nine members of the Bank's monetary policy committee, said: "It is obvious that there is a significant probability that house prices will fall at some stage."

http://www.tiscali.co.uk/money/guardian/news/2004/09/15/homeownerstoldhousepricescouldfallby30.html

The Halifax 'biggest house price fall in decade' headline is rather misleading (surely not a bit of spinning to influence the MPC next week?).

The 0.6% fall in March is based on seasonally ‘adjusted’ figures; the raw data is slightly up on February, and broadly the same as the peak in Jul/Aug 2004, and suggests that current prices are flat if you iron out the bumps.

The seasonal ‘adjustment’ is applied on the assumption that most of the HPI takes place in the run up to August, and the idea is to redistribute this over the year so that the rises appear to follow a straight line, and, interestingly, Jan and Feb are quite strongly ‘boosted’ – this works fine, except that you need to estimate/extrapolate the expected HPI for year (as you don’t know this in advance) with some sort of rolling average, and this introduces significant historical bias.

Clearly, when the prices are flat, as they appear to be now, this greatly overestimates the annual HPI that makes up the adjustment, so we get the Jan and Feb figures boosted to +0.4% and +0.5% respectively, but as the boost is reigned back in March, with no actual HPI materialising, we inevitably get a March fall.

quote:

Originally posted by immy21:
It was discussed in our office this morning that it is in the interests of both Solicitors and Surveyors to prolong the agony of house purchase as the more sales a solicitor deals with on behalf of his client the more he gets paid like wise the more bad surveys doled out by a surveyor will ultimately have the buyer paying him more money on surveys on alternantive properties.
Unlike the agent who gets paid more quickly if the transaction runs quickly
So take your digs elsewhere!

Oh, what tosh. I've worked for close on 100 different solicitors (many years of temping) and I have never, ever come across one who holds up any sort of transaction to try to earn more money. Every single one I have ever known wants to clear files off their desks as quickly as possible. Also, so far as conveyancing is concerned, the majority only charge a fixed fee for the transaction and if a sale or purchase falls through it is very rare for the client to be charged for the work done on that transaction. Just as estate agents have sales targets to meet, solicitors have billing targets to meet and unfinished transactions can't be billed. The solicitor gets paid on the day of completion, not before. They also charge around 1/10th to 1/5th of the amount the estate agents charge per transaction.

quote:

Originally posted by phugoid:
The 0.6% fall in March is based on seasonally ‘adjusted’ figures; the raw data is slightly up on February, and broadly the same as the peak in Jul/Aug 2004, and suggests that current prices are flat if you iron out the bumps.

The seasonal ‘adjustment’ is applied on the assumption that most of the HPI takes place in the run up to August, and the idea is to redistribute this over the year so that the rises appear to follow a straight line, and, interestingly, Jan and Feb are quite strongly ‘boosted’ – this works fine, except that you need to estimate/extrapolate the expected HPI for year (as you don’t know this in advance) with some sort of rolling average, and this introduces significant historical bias.

Clearly, when the prices are flat, as they appear to be now, this greatly overestimates the annual HPI that makes up the adjustment, so we get the Jan and Feb figures boosted to +0.4% and +0.5% respectively, but as the boost is reigned back in March, with no actual HPI materialising, we inevitably get a March fall.

But when you campare them to March of last year (also SA), they are considerably down.
I notice no one making comments of Seasonal Adjustment during the months of Jan and Feb when the SA turned a loss into a gain, but at this time of year they work in the other direction.

Mortgage aprovals also rose a few thousand from the previous month, BUT THEY WERE DOWN 35% on this time last year.It doesn't mean they are going up does it.

And its also highly significant that it the firsat time EVER that the Nationwide has reported a seasonally adjusted fall in March.

Unless you just dont want to hear it of course.

quote:

Originally posted by Gimpl:

quote:

Originally posted by Maju:
Rental yield is a good indication of value, on this premise property is about 50% over valued.

I presume the 'people that know what they are on about' are people that make money from mortgage lending etc.

People were talking people like that during the dot com boom ......... you know, fundamentals dont matter ....... and then ...... POP

Like I say, i'm not saying i'm right either, just that I see no feesable evidence to the contrary.

quote:

You may want prices to drop significantly so you can enter the market but it most likely is not going to happen. The most I have heard (from people who know what they are talking about) is around 4-5% reduction over two years.

I afraid this not an argument for prices to level off, more of a wish imo

Quite wrong, people I refer to are advisors to the MPC as well as one individul who sits on the MPC. As I said - people who know what they are talking about.

Like Kate Barker you mean?

Who said on the 21st if March there is a distinct possibility of the houseing market being in a bubble!
See what you mean, people that know what they are on about

No-one is saying that prices wont drop, they are as you have pointed out and may continue to do so but that is a world away from crashing - can you not see the difference.

You guys from HPC live in your own bubble and you're entitled to your opinion which MAY prove true however it looks unlikely.

I'm in no way implying that we'll wake up one morning and the prices have crashed, the last 'crash' took six years to hit bottom.

Q4 of 2004 saw 2.7% off (land reg) about 10% year, that imo IS crash speed ...... time will tell if it keeps up, speeds up slows down etc.

Like I said before, it would be folly to have a blinkered view, however I'll go with the overall trend.

If we see 2 consecutive quarters of rises I'll propably off house buying.

I do actually have a balanced view, I just can't find evidence to convince me that things will just plateau off.

Supply and demand is dire ...... and things like this really do have a big effect.

quote:

Originally posted by Joolz S:

quote:

Originally posted by immy21:
It was discussed in our office this morning that it is in the interests of both Solicitors and Surveyors to prolong the agony of house purchase as the more sales a solicitor deals with on behalf of his client the more he gets paid like wise the more bad surveys doled out by a surveyor will ultimately have the buyer paying him more money on surveys on alternantive properties.
Unlike the agent who gets paid more quickly if the transaction runs quickly
So take your digs elsewhere!

Oh, what tosh. I've worked for close on 100 different solicitors (many years of temping) and I have never, ever come across one who holds up any sort of transaction to try to earn more money. Every single one I have ever known wants to clear files off their desks as quickly as possible. Also, so far as conveyancing is concerned, the majority only charge a fixed fee for the transaction and if a sale or purchase falls through it is very rare for the client to be charged for the work done on that transaction. Just as estate agents have sales targets to meet, solicitors have billing targets to meet and unfinished transactions can't be billed. The solicitor gets paid on the day of completion, not before. They also charge around 1/10th to 1/5th of the amount the estate agents charge per transaction.

But nearly ALL earn considerably more and get the week end off!
So far this month I have had 2 solicitors advise their clients to pull out as they recomend the properties unsaleable. Funny really, as both developments are 100% occupied, 70% of which would be owners as opposed to tenants; maybe they did their own conveyancing, to miss the serious issues that these two found.
Hundreds of solicitors found no fault, these two did. oooo perhaps I speculate, they want another bite of the cherry!